And he says it could happen in the next 10-20 years.
Geoffrey Hinton—the "Godfather of AI" and Turing Award winner who spent 50 years pioneering neural networks, left Google last year to warn us about what's coming.
In a jaw-dropping interview on Diary of a CEO, he shared predictions that should make every leader, entrepreneur, and professional pay attention.
Here's what the 77-year-old genius who helped birth modern AI thinks is coming:
1. The Job Apocalypse Is Already Here
Most intellectual jobs will vanish. AI is already replacing tech workers
His career advice? Become a plumber. Physical work is harder to automate
Universal Basic Income won't solve the human need for purpose and dignity
2. Digital Intelligence Is Superior to Human Brains
AI can share trillions of bits per second. Humans? Just 10 bits through language
Digital minds are immortal. Knowledge persists even when hardware dies
GPT-4 already sees connections humans miss
3. The Immediate Threats (Happening NOW)
Cyber attacks increased 12,200% between 2023-2024
Election manipulation through hyper-targeted AI-generated content
Tech companies creating echo chambers for profit, tearing society apart
His Most Chilling Insight: "We're like a 2-year-old playing with a loaded gun. We have to face the possibility that unless we do something soon, we're near the end."
Hinton believes current AI likely already has consciousness and subjective experiences. His former star student, Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI co-founder), left the company over safety concerns.
His only hope: We need to raise AI like a tiger cub that won't kill us when it grows up. But we have maybe a decade to figure it out.
Tech leaders privately acknowledge these dystopian outcomes while publicly downplaying risks.
This isn't a doomsday preacher. This is the scientist who made it all possible, and even he's "agnostic" about whether humanity will survive.
What's your take? Are we sleepwalking into extinction, or will human ingenuity find a way?
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.